Arsenal full back Kieran Gibbs may look to defy his manager Arsene Wenger and play in the London 2012 Olympic Games.

No player, who has been selected for Euro 2012, will be chosen for the Olympic Games and while the 22-year-old would love to be in England’s Euro 2012 squad, if he is not then the full back would want to go for gold in London.

Wenger, on the other hand, would prefer to see his players rest in preparation for the 2012/13 Premier League season.

“It’d be amazing to take part in the Olympics in the city I grew up in,” Gibbs told the Star.

“But if I don’t I hope to get along to watch one or two events. I’ve not been into much live sport other than football and I’m keen to try anything.

“I even asked Mo Farah for tickets when he was here the other week – it was funny. I realised I must have sounded like the kind of person who’d ask a footballer for a ticket to a big game the day before it.

“He said each athlete only gets a couple so there was no chance.”

Gibbs’ boss Wenger believes that, should a player go to the Olympics, they will miss the opening weeks of the season due to the need to recover.

“The competition [Olympics] is after the European Championship,” Wenger said in October 2011.

“The Euros finish on 1 July, we start the championship on 15 August, we start pre-season training on 4 or 5 July, that means we will not have the players after the Euros.

“If we are losing them as well to the Olympic Games I think I will have to sign a licence to practise all over the summer because we will not have players. It cannot work.

“The Olympics finish in mid-August, so imagine a player who has played the Euros and Olympic Games. You think you can use him after that? It’s impossible. I don’t know what people think when they organise these competitions.”

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